“You know perfectly well that there was no doubt about my re-election until you spoke a word in Curry’s ear.”
Feverstone eyed the muffin critically. “You make me rather tired,” he said. “If you don’t know how to steer your own course in a place like Bracton, why come and pester me? I’m not a bucking nurse. And for your own good I would advise you in talking to people here to adopt a more agreeable manner than you are using now. Otherwise your life may be, in the famous words, ‘nasty, poor, brutish, and short!’”
“Short?” said Mark. “Is that a threat? Do you mean my life at Bracton or at the N.I.C.E . . . ?”
I shouldn’t stress the distinction too much if I were you,” said Feverstone.
“I shall remember that,” said Mark, rising from his chair. As he made to move away he could not help turning to this smiling man once again and saying, “It was you who brought me here. I thought you at least were my friend.”
“Incurable romantic!” said Lord Feverstone, deftly extending his mouth to an even wider grin and popping the muffin into it entire.
And so Mark knew that if he lost the Belbury job he would lose his Fellowship at Bracton as well.
III
During these days Jane spent as little time as possible in the flat and kept herself awake reading in bed, as long as she could, each night. Sleep had become her enemy. In the daytime she kept on going to Edgestow-nominally in the attempt to find another “woman who would come in twice a week” instead of Mrs. Maggs. On one of these occasions she was delighted to find herself suddenly addressed by Camilla Denniston. Camilla had just stepped out of a car and next moment she introduced a tall dark man as her husband. Jane saw at once that both the Dennistons were the sort of people she liked. She knew that Mr. Denniston had once been a friend of Mark’s but she had never met him; and her first thought was to wonder, as she had wondered before, why Mark’s present friends were so inferior to those he once had. Carey and Wadsden and the Taylors, who had all been members of the set in which she first got to know him, had been nicer than Curry and Busby, not to mention the Feverstone man and this Mr. Denniston was obviously very much nicer indeed.
“We were just coming to see you,” said Camilla.
“Look here, we have lunch with us. Let’s drive you up to the woods beyond Sandown and all feed together in the car. There’s lots to talk about.”
“Or what about your coming to the flat and lunching with me?” said Jane, inwardly wondering how she could manage this. “It’s hardly a day for picnicking.”
“That only means extra washing-up for you,” said Camilla. “Had we better go somewhere in town, Arthur?-if Mrs. Studdock thinks it’s too cold and foggy.”
“A restaurant would hardly do, Mrs. Studdock,” said Denniston, “we want to be private.” The “we” obviously meant “we three” and established at once a pleasant, business-like unity between them. “As well,” he continued. “Don’t you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You’ll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car.”
Jane said she’d never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn’t mind trying. All three got in.
“That’s why Camilla and I got married,” said Denniston as they drove off. “We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.”
“How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?” said Jane. “I don’t think I should ever learn to like rain and snow.”
“It’s the other way round,” said Denniston. “Everyone begins as a child by liking weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children-and the dogs! They know what snow’s made for.”
“I’m sure I hated wet days as a child,” said Jane.
“That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,” said Camilla. “Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it.”
Presently they left the unfenced road beyond Sandown and went bumping across grass and among trees and finally came to rest in a sort of little grassy bay with a fir thicket on one side and a group of beeches on the other. There were wet cobwebs and a rich autumnal smell all round them. Then all three sat together in the back of the car, and there was some unstrapping of baskets, and then sandwiches and a little flask of sherry and finally hot coffee and cigarettes. Jane was beginning to enjoy herself.
“Now!” said Camilla.
“Well,” said Denniston, “I suppose I’d better begin. You know, of course, where we’ve come from, Mrs. Studdock?”
“From Miss Ironwood’s,” said Jane.
“Well, from the same house. But we don’t belong to Grace Ironwood. She and we both belong to someone else.”
“Yes?” said Jane.
“Our little household, or company, or society, or whatever you like to call it is run by a Mr. Fisher-King. At least that is the name he has recently taken. You might or might not know his original name if I told it to you. He is a great traveller but now an invalid. He got a wound in his foot on his last journey which won’t heal.”
“How did he come to change his name?”
“He had a married sister in India, a Mrs. Fisher-King. She has just died and left him a large fortune on condition that he took the name. She was a remarkable woman in her way; a friend of the great native Christian mystic whom you may have heard of-the Sura. And that’s the point. The Sura had reason to believe, or thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the human race. And just before the end-just before he disappeared-he became convinced that it would actually come to a head in this island. And after he’d gone.”
“Is he dead?” asked Jane.
“That we don’t know,” answered Denniston. “Some people think he’s alive, others not. At any rate he disappeared. And Mrs. Fisher-King more or less handed over the problem to her brother, to our chief. That, in fact, was why she gave him the money. He was to collect a company round him to watch for this danger, and to strike when it came.”
“That’s not quite right, Arthur,” said Camilla. “He was told that a company would in fact collect round him and he was to be its head.”
“I didn’t think we need go into that,” said Arthur.
“But I agree. And now, Mrs. Studdock, this is where you come in.”
Jane waited.
“The Sura said that when the time came we should find what he called a seer: a person with second sight.”
“Not that we’d get a seer, Arthur,” said Camilla, “that a seer would turn up. Either we or the other side would get her.”
“And it looks,” said Denniston to Jane, “as if you were the seer.”
“But please,” said Jane, smiling, “I don’t want to be anything so exciting.”
“No,” said Denniston. “It’s rough luck on you.” There was just the right amount of sympathy in his tone.
Camilla turned to Jane and said, “I gathered from Grace Ironwood that you weren’t quite convinced you were a seer. I mean you thought it might be just ordinary dreams. Do you still think that?”
“It’s all so strange and-beastly!” said Jane. She liked these people, but her habitual inner prompter was whispering, “Take care. Don’t get drawn in. Don’t commit yourself to anything. You’ve got your own life to Live.” Then an impulse of honesty forced her to add: “As a matter of fact I’ve had another dream since then. And it turns out to have been true. I saw the murder-Mr. Hingest’s murder.”
“There you are,” said Camilla. “Oh, Mrs. Studdock, you must come in. You must, you must. That means we’re right on top of it now. Don’t you see? We’ve been wondering all this time exactly where the trouble is going to begin: and now your dream gives us a clue. You’ve seen something within a few miles of Edgestow. In fact, we are apparently in the thick of it already-whatever it is. And we can’t move an inch without your help. You are our secret service, our eyes. It’s all been arranged long before we were born. Don’t spoil everything. Do join us.”